


from eden

by solracht



Series: into each life [2]
Category: Fallout (Video Games), Fallout 4
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Canon-Typical Violence, F/M, Fluff, Spoilers
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-04-22
Updated: 2016-04-22
Packaged: 2018-06-03 20:43:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,726
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6625507
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/solracht/pseuds/solracht
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Honey, you're familiar like my mirror years ago.<br/>Idealism sits in prison; chivalry fell on its sword.<br/>Innocence died screaming -- honey, ask me, I should know.<br/>I slithered here from Eden just to sit outside your door." -- 'From Eden', Hozier</p><p>--</p><p>A collection of one-shots, drabbles, and shorts that don't quite work as stand-alones but also aren't part of one whole, either. Snapshots of Paladin Danse, Lone Wanderer Amelia, and the hot mess that is their time in the Commonwealth.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This is all incredibly and ridiculously self-indulgent and shameful, I'll be honest.  
> Most of these shorts will probably take place after Blind Betrayal, so spoiler warning for that, as well as the end of Fallout 3. Mentions of Broken Steel will also be dropped here and there.

“What was your father like?”

Looking back on it after several months, a shocking revelation, and the abandonment of the Brotherhood as a whole, Amelia would realize that this very moment was when she realized that Danse was a person worth knowing. She would sit back and think of how many people had asked her that very same question in the many years since she’d first taken up the title of Lone Wanderer and realize that she could count them all on one hand. It seemed that the moment a person looked at her and realized that she was the Savior of the Wastes, Little Miss Vault 101, they would immediately understand and know whose daughter she was. Her work and actions went hand-in-hand with her father’s reputation always, it seemed, and yet so very few people seemed to harbor any sort of curiosity for the story of the man who had made it all possible.

But Danse, stern and severe as he was, sat across from her at a table in the lunchroom of the Prydwen and took a moment of his time to ask. It was the most personal thing he’d asked her since they first met; one of the only parts of her and her past that he couldn’t find out about while scrolling through her file in the Brotherhood's archives. He watched her in that intent way he tended to watch just about everyone, and he waited.

“He was…” She pursed her lips in thought, struggling to come up with the right words to describe the man. There were a million and one phrases she’d used before to refer to the man as in the past and none of them were, she realized, fair or appropriate, given the circumstances. “He was stern. Strict, but not in an excessive way. He knew what he wanted me to be, knew what I could be, and did whatever he could to make sure that that potential wasn’t wasted. He was like that with most people, actually.”

She idly stirred the noodles she’d been picking at and looked at him. “The reports didn’t tell you what you wanted to know?”

And of course there were reports hidden away in the archives, detailing any and every bit of prolonged interaction the Brotherhood had with James and Project Purity as a whole. She’d tried to read through them once, only managing a few paragraphs—everything else left her with a bitter taste in her mouth and an uncomfortable feeling.

“They told me a great deal about who he was to the Brotherhood. There’s a wealth of information there about his abilities as a scientist, but nothing about who he was as a man.”

“And there’s a difference?” It was something Amelia had mulled over from the moment she’d first encountered the Brotherhood. An organization such as their own emphasized the uses of a person, the worth and value they could bring to the table as a soldier, a leader, a follower. To hear that Danse, who bled Brotherhood, thought differently would come as a surprise.

She would laugh at herself later, knowing that Danse was nothing if not one big surprise in and of himself.

“Of course,” he replied, frowning. “At the end of the day, a suit of armor is just that: a suit of armor. It’s the person that wears it that truly matters when the battle is over.”

The words were familiar, and Amelia chuckled. “’ _You’ll get yourself or your squad mates killed if you forget that your armor is an extension of yourself. Idiots think that they are their armor._ ’ Paladin Gunny?”

The corner of Danse’s lip quirked up, and Amelia recognized it as the closest thing to a smile anyone could get out of the man. “I trained under him for some time, yes.”

A comfortable silence fell between the two of them. Amelia hesitated to break it, but did so with a smile.

“The two of you would’ve gotten along pretty well, I think,” she said. “You and my father, I mean. Nothing was more important to him than what he felt was his duty. In the end, the only thing he really wanted was to pass down a better world than the one he'd inherited.”

Danse nodded and looked suddenly solemn. “It would have been an honor to have met him.”

And then, after another moment of silence, his smile returned. “If his daughter is any indication, I’m certain that he was an exceptional man.”

Amelia laughed and thanked him for the compliment, and that was, she would later acknowledge, the beginning of everything.


	2. healing

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> There are some wounds that not even the most skilled of physicians can heal.
> 
> (Content warning for incredibly brief descriptions of injuries. This drabble is literally just centered around stitching up a wound.
> 
> Post-Blind Betrayal spoiler warning.)

There are some wounds that not even the most skilled of physicians can heal. Amelia’s father had told her that once, quiet and sad-eyed, long before he disappeared and the life she knew went up in flames. She felt that she had understood and accepted this lesson after receiving a few wounds of her own that no stimpak or dosage of Med-X could ever make better, wounds that no one could see but she could feel, always. She had hoped that her own half-broken heart would be enough to teach her what he’d meant. Of course, her hopes seemed to matter just as much as her wants in the grand scheme of things, and she eventually found herself revisiting her father’s words twenty years after they’d first been spoken.

She supposed she was lucky enough to at least have one wound she could heal, one hurt she could help lessen for her patient. She sat behind Danse, carefully and quietly stitching up a particularly nasty gash he’d managed to acquire while she was gone. He’d remembered the location of a suit of power armor, he’d told her, and decided to fetch it for himself now that he was without his own. He said no more than that, not even bothering to explain what it was that had managed to sneak in a flank attack and deal him the blow in question. He was quiet even as he was poked and prodded and tended to, and it bothered her. She’d known him for less than a year and already understood that this was not Danse. Distant and steely, replying only with two or three words at a time…no, she’d fought alongside Danse, had run missions with him, ate meals with him, shared many of her days with him, and he was never one to look at the world so numbly.

But, she reminded herself, the Danse she’d been introduced to by Maxson so many months ago had never lost everything he knew, everything he was. The Danse she’d admired had never had his world shattered into a million tiny pieces, had never been left to clean up the mess by himself.

Well, almost entirely by himself. She didn’t intend on leaving anytime soon.

A feeling of discomfort settled itself in her stomach as she finished stitching the wound. She’d been told before that she had terrible bedside manner, and she’d laughed at that. _I get that from my father_ , she’d said, and it was true—the man had been the furthest thing from charismatic that she had ever known. Looking back on his interactions with others, she realized that he’d been awkward and clumsy with his words, never quite able to say what it was he needed to in a way that others wanted to hear, and knew that she couldn’t be the same with Danse. If she was going to say something, it would have to be right, perfect in wording and delivery both. She lingered behind him, watching the expanse of his back and the stillness of him as a whole, and floundered, struggling to be the opposite of what she was, to be what Danse needed.

_You’re still you_ , she wanted to say. _I know what it’s like to find out that everything you think you are is a lie. I know what it’s like to have to rebuild yourself from the ground up. I want you to move. To act. To stop wallowing. I want you to realize that this doesn’t have to change you. I want you to understand that you’re still a man._

And how could he be anything but that, even now that they knew what they did? She settled a hand on his back, flattened it out and pressed just lightly enough to let him know that it was there, that _she_ was there. The skin beneath her own was soft and warm and so very, very human. If she pressed her fingers against his neck or his wrist, she knew that she would still feel the beating of a heart so determined to work, so determined to live. He had told her about his past with the Brotherhood, had told her stories about missions he’d been on and soldiers he’d called brother or sister, and she knew that his heart was a good one, a strong one. How could he fight against it? How could he doubt its worth?

She wasn’t skilled enough with her words to properly convey what it was she felt or wanted him to know, however, and so she hoped that her presence would be enough. She leaned closer to him and pressed her forehead against his shoulder, careful not to bother the patch of skin she’d just mended.

“Amelia?” It was good to hear him speak; better to hear him call her by her name. “If you’re tired—”

“I’m sorry,” she interrupted, her mind filled with ways to heal a hurt that couldn’t be touched. “I’m sorry that they did this to you.”

His next breath was a shuddering one, and she felt certain that he knew she wasn’t talking about whoever—or whatever—it was that had rent his skin. They sat like that for what felt like years.

This hurt, she knew, would never properly heal. It would scar and pucker and tear itself back open some days, reminding Danse of its existence when it could. But later, when Danse pulled away and she put away her tools and he looked at her with clear, alert eyes for the first time in days, she hoped that she had the skill needed to soften the pain, to make it easier to bear.

This wound couldn’t be healed, but it could be helped.


End file.
